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I am unable to back up my files to my external hard drive which is my goal before it goes in for repairs. I cannot turn it on because it is grayed out. It continues to tell me it has already backed up information. The external hard drive device cannot be found under any control panel, settings, device manager, hidden places etc.. But the light is on which says it is working. I have one day left to figure this mess out. Super frustrating. All I wanted to do was a backup to an external hard drive in case I lost anything during the repair it was going in for.
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With the external drive connected, open Disk Management and ensure that the drive is initialized and/or the correct format (NTFS).
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I have two Dell 5480 laptops, running the latest build of Windows 11, one of them recognized a 500 GB external hard drive, plugged to a USB port, but the other laptop did not recognize the same external HDD, plugged the same way. The light on the external HDD was on, it was spinning on the touch, just that the second laptop did not show that it existed (the disk was "hidden", not shown in Windows Explorer). I followed the above advice of Jordan Millama, right-clicked on the laptop's Windows Start button, selected "Disk Management", and there it was, the external HDD was there, with its partition, but it did not have a drive letter assigned to it. So, I right-clicked on the partition of that disk without drive letter, and selected from the menu "Change drive letter and paths". The Disk Management suggested the letter "F:", I selected it, and within less than a second the Windows Explorer finally showed the external HDD as drive "F:", with all its contents.
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Some options:
a) Test the external drive on another computer
b) If you don't have another computer then see if you can find a friend, neighbor, relative, or local computer store to test the drive
If you've confirmed that the drive is ok, (no problems with partitions, no failures when tested) and it still does not appear post images for:
a) BIOS
https://www.disk-image.com/faq-bootmenu.htm
If it appears in the BIOS then post images of:
b) Disk Management
c) File explorer
d) Device manager > click view > click show hidden devices > expand disk drives and other devices > post images or share links into this thread
An additional method is to use a flash drive to copy and paste files or make backup images.
See if you can find a friend, neighbor, relative, or local computer store to borrow or purchase a flash drive.
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Open the Start menu and type "disk management," and open Create and Format Hard Disk Partitions. Once Disk Management loads, scroll down to see if your disk appears in the list. If it does, make sure it's online and formatted.
You may try another USB port or, another PC to check.
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This answer has been deleted due to a violation of our Code of Conduct. The answer was manually reported or identified through automated detection before action was taken. Please refer to our Code of Conduct for more information.
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